Category: obituary

Wayne Kramer died

I’m disappointed it isn’t being covered more. He was co-lead guitar player for the MC5. If you were a fan of fast loud guitars in the Midwest in 1969, he was a giant. The band was founded on the principles of revolutionary politics and drug use; it broke up (the write-ups frequently say ‘shattered’) in 1972. Kramer became, in his words, a small-time Detroit criminal. He went to prison in 1975, and I lost track of him.

Turns out his is an inspiring story of redemption. In prison Red Rodney, who played with Charlie Parker, took Kramer aside, teaching him about music and how to straighten up. When Kramer was released, he worked with dozens of punk bands live and in the studio. His obituary said he played with Was (Not Was)—I’d never heard that. I’ll get to that when I play their four records from my collection. He played a concert at Sing Sing. He was involved in antiwar protests. He founded and led Jail Guitar Doors, a charity bringing instruments and instruction to help rehabilitate prisoners. Rest in peace, Wayne.

Here’s my favorite, Ramblin’ Rose. It ain’t Nat King Cole.

Update on rock obits

A year ago when Danny Kalb died I predicted there would be deaths to report two or three times a week. Turns out that rock and rollers by and large live longer than I thought. Three deaths were reported in the New York Times today. Denny Laine, a founder of the Moody Blues, was 79. He sang lead on Go Now!, their big hit. He was in the band for their first two albums, then in Ginger Baker’s Air Force. Paul McCartney liked what he was doing and asked him to join Wings. He left 10 years later after McCartney was arrested in Japan for marijuana possession. Laine continued to make new music as well as play concerts. The Times said had like to play music to an audience.

Scott Kempner died while living in a nursing home because of early onset dementia. That shouldn’t happen to anyone, much less a one-time member of an influential proto-punk band, The Dictators.

Geordi Walker, 64, died of a stroke. He played with Killing Joke for nearly 40 years. The obit mentioned he moved back to England (from the U.S.) to take care of his father and he had a kid named Atticus. I thought they included those details to make him sound normal, having said he was in the band Revolting Cocks.

Songs of Alienation and Despair

That’s the title of a mix tape I made 40 years ago. It is beyond sad—my wife asked me not to play it in the car when I was by myself. I haven’t used my tape deck in years, so I played it the other day instead of carting the tape deck to Sally Ann. The tape has gotten better over the years. It’s better than I remember.

I’ll get back to that. Today’s news includes the death of Shane MacGowan. I like the Pogues and Gaelic Punk. Fairytale of New York might qualify as alienation and despair. Lately I’ve been playing Danko/Manuel by the Drive-By Truckers. If you hear Richard Manuel calling you from the afterlife, I’d say you feel sufficiently distant and estranged to be alienated.

Here are classics.

When I heard this song in 1975, I was the kid. Now of course I am the Old Man who just needs to get out of the way.

Terry Kirkman, founder of The Association, died

It’s about six weeks since a co-founder of The Band died—there must have been some attraction for a generic collective name for a band in the 1960s. Peter Frampton quit high school to join The Herd, as I recall.

Kirkman wrote Cherish, Along Comes Mary, Never My Love, and maybe a dozen more songs that were on Top 40 radio. He didn’t like the other members of The Association and left the band (instead of spending 50 years touring behind their hits, the way many bands did). He was an addiction counselor for 20 years.

His obit has a self-effacing reference to a terrible appearance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, but the final anecdote sounds grumpy about his being famous for one song. For 45 years, he said, he was always introduced as I’d like you to meet Terry, he wrote Cherish. He wanted to change his name to Cherish to speed that up. Man, I never heard Bobby Hebb complain of 50 years of being the guy who wrote Sunny.

More on Robertson and The Band

An obit today said he put out a record titled Contact from the Underworld of Redboy [a derogatory nickname for Robertson in his youth]. It contains snippets from an interview with Leonard Peltier, an American Indian activist convicted of murder. I’ll look for it.

Also, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, a blog of politics, academia, and culture, posted an item about Robertson shortly after he died. It ended with this recap: ‘The Band produced much great music in the late 1960s and early 1970s; by the time the farewell concert captured by The Last Waltz took place 47 (!) years ago, the group’s members were in the midst of squandering their talents in substance abuse, fights over money and songwriting credits, and other classic dysfunctions of those who can afford a rock and roll lifestyle.

‘Still, as Orwell once remarked, how much it is, after all, to have any talents to squander.’

Robbie Robertson died

Yesterday when I got the news I started to write a death notice. The angle I took was that he was the rare big star rocker who chose to fade away. He was on two great, successful albums in 1968 and ’69 as a member of The Band; he exited from rock and roll in 1976 in a big show filmed by Martin Scorsese; then he spent 40 years going out with a whimper scoring sound tracks. He famously said he didn’t want to travel playing old hits. The result, I thought, was that he saved some dignity but nobody was going to miss him. If one wasn’t 18 in 1969, you wouldn’t care.

Today I saw I Robertson’s obit started on the front page of the New York Times, then filled the last page of the front section. I clearly underestimated the continuing power of the folks who worship Bob Dylan. Dylan liked Robbie, even doing a star turn in The Last Waltz. Robertson got the big rock star treatment despite not having done much since Woodstock because in 1966 when a fan yelled ‘Judas’ at Dylan for performing with amplified instruments, Robbie did indeed play it fucking loud, as Dylan requested. It is an odd legacy. I have oodles more to share about Robertson and The Band.

December by George Winston

Winston died June 4. It took me a week to remember I had an album of his reviewed and in the queue. I thought the record was okay for solo piano. That is: no lyrics, no hooks to pull me in, and no sex and drugs to keep me interested. I had no idea it sold three million copies. Obviously other people liked it MUCH more than I did. Allmusic said December had ‘unparalleled—and undeniable—beauty. How can music be simultaneously stirring and soothing, relaxed and yet exalted?’ I think they gave it the same review I did, they just had to pretend they don’t prefer rock and roll to classical lite.

Records I’ve received from friends and relatives tend not to be what I prefer. When my buddy Sean died I inherited ‘December,’ for example, along with some pop gospel and old-fashioned folk music. When my in-laws downsized for the last time I got some jazz and showtunes I might not have chosen for myself. Time for me to get past my squeamishness and integrate these outsider records into my collection.

William of Occam let me down

The simplest reason for Graham Nash, 81-year-old rocker about 50 years past his prime, to appear in stories in the New York Times and the New Yorker in the same week would have been his death. But you can’t always depend on the simplest explanation being the truth. Maybe I should have read the stories—turns out he is making a comeback. Man, old rockers make comebacks all the time—why should this be big news?

I really liked the Hollies, so I can say I cared about Carrie Anne and Carousel. Bus Stop is immortal. But later songs such as Marrakesh Express, Our House, Teach Your Children, Chicago/We Can Change the World, and Immigration Man (to name a few) run together in their mediocrity.

I remembered Stop, Stop, Stop was about a belly dancer. I looked it up—it’s a light-hearted tune about serial sexual assault. It’s no Stray Cat Blues, but I don’t imagine it gets much airplay today.

Vida Blue died

If you weren’t following baseball in 1971, you might not believe the season Blue had. 39 starts, 24-8 record, 24 complete games, 8 shutouts, 301 strikeouts, 9 WAR. [Speaking of great seasons by a lefty, I have a Yogi story. Berra explained why he was skeptical that Koufax was 25-5 in 1963. After trying to hit Koufax in the World Series, he said he understood the 25 wins, it was the 5 losses he couldn’t see.]

Blue had a great name. I heard some people call him the Blue Blazer (with silver buttons, I presumed). Vida Yellow is a thoroughbred race horse. The announcer said the first word as if it were Spanish; the horse was livin’ the yellow life, whatever that would mean. Me, I say if you mix Vida Blue and Vida Yellow you get Vida Green.

I admire people who overcome drug addiction. Rest in peace, Vida.

Gordon Lightfoot died

He was 86. I have two of his albums—The Way I Feel (notable for the Canadian Railroad Trilogy, which said the railroads were bad for the environment and worse for the indigenous Canadians) and Lightfoot, which has many good songs. He did First Time, by Ewan McColl, Changes, by Phil Ochs, Pride of Man, by Hamilton Camp, Early Morning Rain, and That’s What You Get for Lovin’ Me. In Rich Man’s Spiritual, he said a dying rich man figures if he buys a long white robe, golden slippers, a smiling angel, and a poor man’s troubles he’d have checked all the boxes to get to heaven.

Lightfoot got long and positive reviews in his obituaries. I was afraid it would be all The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a six-minute song that was played to death on CKLW (which was always looking for Canadian content). I’d never stopped to realize how many good songs Lightfoot did.